New Charges Leveled at Brazil’s President : Scandal: Latest revelations of corruption could strengthen expected attempt to impeach Collor.

While legal experts began preparing a request for the impeachment of President Fernando Collor de Mello, the Brazilian press published new information Saturday linking Collor to a “gang” allegedly engaged in crimes of corruption.

The information came from a congressional committee on corruption that is scheduled to issue its draft report Monday. The committee is to vote on the report Wednesday, and the document is expected to serve as the basis for an attempt to impeach Collor.

A group of more than a dozen jurists has begun studies aimed at formulating a single impeachment request to be presented to the lower house of Congress on behalf of opposition parties and other organizations. The request, currently planned for early September, would be signed by the presidents of the Brazilian Bar Assn. and the Brazilian Press Assn.

The congressional committee’s report, in the final stages of being drafted this weekend, says the treasurer of Collor’s 1989 presidential campaign organized a “permanent and continuing” group whose criminal activities included tax evasion and influence trafficking, the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo said Saturday. The former campaign treasurer is Paulo Cesar Farias, a businessman from Collor’s home state of Alagoas.

“The report also affirms that . . . Farias presented himself to several persons and companies speaking in the name of President Collor,” Folha said. It said that Claudio Vieira, Collor’s former private secretary, and Ana Acioli, his personal secretary, are accused in the draft report of belonging to Farias’ “gang.” Collor has denied any association with Farias since becoming president in March, 1990.

Folha and other newspapers reported Saturday that the congressional committee has documents showing that one of Farias’ companies, an investment and construction firm known as EPC, paid $164,000 last year to remodel an apartment owned by Collor in Alagoas. “It was the committee’s most important discovery of Collor’s involvement in the . . . ‘scheme,’ ” said the Rio newspaper O Globo.

According to information previously leaked by the congressional committee, $2.5 million in checks written on “phantom” accounts was deposited in an account controlled by Collor secretary Acioli and used to pay household expenses in the president’s private mansion. Former secretary Vieira has said the money was part of a $5-million campaign loan from a Uruguayan company, but members of the congressional committee have linked the phantom accounts to Farias.

As compromising information has mounted, public demonstrations against Collor have built up steam. The biggest one so far jammed downtown Rio streets Friday with at least 25,000 students.

Some government ministers are expected to quit Collor’s Cabinet next week, but Economy Minister Marcilio Marques Moreira denied rumors that he will be one of them. Economic analysts have speculated that without the stabilizing influence of Moreira, a respected banker, Brazil’s inflation of more than 20% a month could become even harder to control.